60 Minutes
From iGeek
CBS television news magazine broadcast to further their far-left bias, and scaremonger the gullible.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2022-06-02 |
Examples[edit | edit source]
- Unintended acceleration - November 23, 1986, segment concerning the Audi automobile. The story interviewed 6 people who had crashed their cars, claiming 'when the brake pedal was pushed the car surged forward and ran into/over things. It was debunked as if you jammed both the brake and gas, the car would decellerate -- the brakes were more powerful than the engine, so it was obviously driver error, and pressing on the gas by mistake that had caused the problem. CBS partially retracted, without ever acknowledging the test results.
- Jeep rollovers - December, 1980 they demonstrated Jeep CJ-5 high rollover risk during an extreme turn at 20 mph. There were 435 times and only having 8 rollovers, and they added weight to hanging spots to increase the rollover risk.
- Alar - February 1989, 60 Minutes aired a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council claiming that the use of daminozide (Alar) on apples presented an unacceptably high health risk to consumers. Apple sales dropped and CBS was sued.
- Werner Erhard - March 3, 1991, 60 Minutes did a hit piece on Erhard's personal and business life. Erhard filed a lawsuit against CBS, claiming that the broadcast contained several "false, misleading and defamatory" statements. But the barrier to defamation was so high that he dropped it. After numerous independent journalists exposed untruths and factual inaccuracies in the story the segment was removed by CBS from its archives, with a disclaimer: "This segment has been deleted at the request of CBS News for legal or copyright reasons."
- Brown & Williamson - Vice President for Research and Development Jeffrey Wigand provided information that B&W had systematically hidden the health risks of their cigarettes. There was too much financial gain in not running the piece, so The Wall Street Journal instead broke Wigand's story. The exposé of the incident was published in an article in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner, entitled "The Man Who Knew Too Much". The incident was turned into a feature film entitled The Insider. Wallace denounced the portrayal of him as inaccurate to his stance on the issue.
- U.S. Customs Service - 1997, 60 Minutes alleged that agents of the U.S. Customs Service ignored drug trafficking across the Mexico–United States border at San Diego. Mike Horner, a former Customs Service employee, had passed the memos on to 60 Minutes (written by Rudy Camacho head of the San Diego branch office). CBS alleged that Camacho had allowed trucks belonging to a particular firm to cross the border unimpeded, which devestated Rudy's career. Camacho sued CBS and settled for an undisclosed amount of money in damages when it was discovered that Mike Horner had forged the documents as an act of revenge for his treatment within the Customs Service.
- Kennewick Man - October 25, 1998. A legal battle between archaeologists and the Umatilla tribe over the remains of a skeleton, nicknamed Kennewick Man, was reported by 60 Minutes. The report left out important arguments and focused heavily on the racial politics of the controversy and also added inflammatory arguments that were later debunked.
- Timothy McVeigh - March 12, 2000, 60 Minutes aired an interview with 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, already sentenced to death. McVeigh was given the opportunity to vent against the government. CBS refused to show the entire interview, and has stated no reasons, likely that he said truths they didn't want exposed. Following the program, a federal policy was enacted prohibiting face-to-face interviews with death row inmates. (NOTE: Not a fan of McVeigh, or his actions. But his action were an illegal/immoral response to government actions that have been rules illegal/immoral in the first place).
- Viacom/CBS cross-promotion - they promoted books, films, celebrities of their sister business (Viacom) without disclosing the journalistic conflict-of-interest to viewers.
- Killian documents controversy - September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes aired a hit piece on George Bush right before the re-election, and discussed six documents critical of President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard from 1972 to 1973. These documents were expoosed as forgeries. Dan Rather was fired for incompetence not long after this.
- "The Internet Is Infected" - March 29, 2009. Don Jackson, declared in the program that "a part of [his] job is to know the enemy", and showed a photo of Finnish upper-level school pupils and misidentified them as Russian hackers.
- Benghazi report - October 27, 2013. British military contractor Dylan Davies ("Morgan Jones"), described racing to the Benghazi compound several hours after the main assault was over, scaling a 12-foot wall and knocking out a lone fighter with the butt of a rifle. He also claimed to have visited a Benghazi hospital earlier that night where he saw Ambassador Christopher Stevens' body. This tale conflicted with other testemony by Davies. So CBS issued a correction, investigated, and concluded they had failed their standards and practices. Davies' book, The Embassy House was pulled by the Simon and Schuster unit of CBS a a result.
- NSA report - December 15, 2013, 60 Minutes aired a report on the National Security Agency (NSA) that was widely criticized as false and a "puff piece".
- Tesla - March 30, 2014, 60 Minutes presented a story on the Tesla Model S luxury electric automobile, with fake gasoline engine dubbed over the footage. CBS released a statement explaining that the sound was the result of an audio editing error, and subsequently removed the sound from the online version of the piece. However, several news outlets, as well as Jalopnik itself, expressed doubt over the authenticity of this explanation.
- Sexual harassment - After the resignation of CBS news head Les Moonves, an investigation into sexual harassment at CBS uncovered evidence of long-running sexual harassment issues stemming from behavior of producers Jeff Fager and Don Hewitt (60 Minutes)
- Florida COVID-19 vaccine rollout - April 2021, 60 Minutes ran a hit piece on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the state's COVID-19 vaccine, claiming that a donation by the supermarket chain Publix to DeSantis' re-election campaign influenced Florida's partnership with Publix stores for vaccine distribution. It was "intentionally false". PolitiFact stated that by omitting DeSantis' remarks on why the state partnered with Publix to distribute vaccines, the clip could be considered to be "Deceptive editing". They also omitted virtually all of DeSantis background and accomplishments.
- Facial Recognition report - May 16, 2021, Anderson Cooper's hit piece on the flaws in facial recognition technology used by the police (resulting in incorrect identification of people of color) received backlash for denying credit to the black female researchers who pioneered the field. CBS later issued a statement explaining that these researchers were not included due to time restrictions of the segment.
- Trump and 60 Minutes - 60 Fake minutes attacked Trump and falsely tried to fact check him and do a smear piece, with Leslie Stahl having a hostile authoritative interview claiming “we can't just let you say false things”, while they lied and sat on their hands while Joe flat out lied about the laptop and Kamala Harris told 4 known lies in a single reply, to no challenges/follow-ups.
Videos[edit | edit source]
60 Minutes on D&D  |
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Dungeons and Dragons Demonification (1985) |
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